Revealed: the funeral plot to bury Dave

We are all Thatcherites now, said David Cameron in a BBC interview on the morning of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral. Wishful thinking, perhaps, on the PM’s part.

Even as he was wiping away a tear in St Paul’s Cathedral, the real Thatcherites were sharpening their knives.

With the Tories heading for a drubbing in the county council elections on May 2, some of the biggest beasts in the Tory parliamentary jungle — and I know who they are — have quietly determined how many losses the PM can sustain before there is a challenge to his leadership ahead of the next General Election.

Some of the biggest beasts in the Tory parliamentary jungle have quietly determined how many losses the PM can sustain before there is a challenge to his leadership ahead of the next General Election

Under current rules, 46 MPs have to write to the chairman of the 1922 backbench committee of MPs to trigger a motion of no confidence.

Of the 2,200 council seats up for grabs, the Tories are defending 1,600. The last time they were contested was in 2009, at the low point of Gordon Brown’s popularity, which is why the Tories performed so well.

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But things are likely to be very different this time around, and with UKIP surging to 17 per cent in one poll at the weekend, Cameron’s position is vulnerable. Some Tory MPs were actually discussing at the Guildhall reception after Lady T’s funeral how many seats Cameron has to win to see off any threat.

Tory strategists privately admit they haven’t a clue how many seats UKIP will steal from them, just as they haven’t a clue how many Bulgarians and Romanians will come into Britain in the New Year.I’ll bet UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, has a reasonable idea on both counts.

Seeking a sign of Red Ed’s spine...

When Ed Miliband had surgery for a broken wrist at Easter, do you think the surgeon found any backbone buried deep within that gawky frame?

When Red Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, had surgery for a broken wrist at Easter, do you think the surgeon found any backbone buried deep within that gawky frame?

The odious George Galloway’s attempt to scupper the cancellation of Prime Minister’s Questions because of Lady Thatcher’s funeral reeks of his usual rank hypocrisy. Galloway has taken part in only 13 per cent of votes since he was re-elected as an MP in a by-election last summer — even fewer than the stay-away former Labour leader Gordon Brown.

Brown, who was also at the funeral, played host to Lady Thatcher in November 2009 at the official unveiling of a portrait of her. She was the first living politician to have their picture in 10 Downing Street. Brown was clearly more of an admirer of Lady Thatcher than some of his Labour colleagues.

When civil servants prepared a short speech for the ceremony, he took one look at it and told his aides: ‘I can’t read that.’ He went on to make a short, off-the-cuff speech which was affectionate, amusing, and paid tribute to Lady Thatcher’s unique place in history as the first woman Prime Minister.

Labour's democracy inaction

In the Police And Crime Commissioners election in November, the turnout was a derisory 14.9 per cent. Red Ed angrily denounced the ‘waste of millions of pounds’ in lively exchanges at Prime Minister’s Questions, saying: ‘It was a day of humiliation for the Coalition Government.’ Last weekend, Len McCluskey was re-elected as head of the Unite trade union on a turnout of 15 per cent of the membership.

And what did Red Ed have to say about that? Nothing, of course, because Unite swung the Labour leadership for him in 2010 and is the party’s most generous donor.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Former Tory Cabinet minister John Redwood, who ran Lady Thatcher’s policy unit in the mid-1980s, says: ‘She was very brave. Returning from one trip abroad, she was asked why she was wearing sunglasses.

‘Without affectation or flinching, she said she had been warned to expect an attack during the walkabout. She simply said she feared they would throw acid in her eyes, and she needed her eyes to do her job.’

TWEET OF THE WEEK: After John Prescott — or should we now call him Baron Prescott of Kingston upon Hull — expressed outrage at Lady Thatcher’s taxpayer-funded funeral, the Conservative MP Douglas Carswell said: ‘Just read John Prescott comments regarding funeral of former Prime Minister. For such a large man, he is really very small.’ Quite.